1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a flexible CNC-multiposition measuring installation, which represents a combination of components from the coordinate measuring technique with elements from the multiposition measuring technique and the contour testing technique, which are joinable with each other in a common measuring installation. Such CNC-multiposition measuring installations are, in particular, adapted for the integration thereof into a manufacturing or production process.
Increasing demands are constantly placed on the manufacturing or production measuring technology, which result from the utilization of new production methods and flexible production systems, the changed production structures and production sequences, and the extensive automation through the employment of new information technologies. Moreover, there must also be considered the constructive demands on the micro and macro configuration of workpieces. Belonging to the most important task of the manufacturing measuring technique is the determination of the geometric features of workpieces (the investigation of the contour of the workpiece). Within this province, evermore criteria are always decisive to the applicability of production measuring apparatuses for certain measuring tasks.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
The locations for the utilization of production measuring apparatuses within a manufacturing or production plant extend themselves to the receipt of the goods, to production islands for the preparation of corrective values for processing or manufacturing machines for the purpose of regulating the production process, quality control, assembly and the final control of the ultimate product. In all of these provinces, contour-testing measuring media come presently into use. The keypoint of the manufacturing measuring technique in the production process, which for a lengthy period of time resided within the experiment or testing chamber in the absolutely accurate and extremely universally geometric ultimate testing of workpieces under expedient conditions, is frequently displaced directly into, the province or area of manufacturing. There, under manufacturing conditions, with regard to the measuring time, the number and training of the measuring personnel and the conditions of the surroundings, must there be made possible accuracies comparable to those obtained in a testing chamber, as a result of which there must be assumed a restriction in flexibility.
In order to be able to realize these demands, there is afforded the possibility, on the one hand, to exploit the further development of conventional manufacturing or production measuring apparatuses with the extensive retention of the fundamental properties in the measuring techniques of these apparatuses or, on the other hand, to carry out the development of a new type of manufacturing measuring apparatus which inherently combines the advantageous components of conventional manufacturing measuring apparatuses.